1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an image-processing device for recognizing characters of a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) obtained by reading a printout of a Web page and generating the image data of the Web page to be outputted by connecting to its Web server.
2. Description of Related Art
As the use of personal computers have becomes popular and the number of users of the Internet has increased in recent years, the chance of printing Web pages as well as the chance of copying Web page printouts have increased due to the fact that the information exchange by means of printed media is still very popular. Unfortunately, however, the image quality deterioration produced as a result of copying Web page printouts tends to be conspicuous due to the fact that Web pages are normally designed as color pages. Therefore, various image-processing devices have been proposed (JP-A-10-283313 and others) for obtaining printouts of Web pages based on the images with least quality deteriorations using various methods of reading the URL recorded on the document footer and elsewhere by character recognition, obtaining the HTML file by accessing the Web server identified by the URL, generating the image data of the Web page, and printing it out.
However, those proposals have a universal shortcoming that they fail to consider and consequently cannot cope with a situation where connection cannot be made with an intended Web server due to reasons such as URL recognition errors, relocation or deletion of Web pages, congestions or operation interruptions of Web servers, etc.
Moreover, even if the HTML file is obtained by accessing the Web server, these proposals may still end up producing Web page image data different from the document due to reasons such as updates of the Web page.
Moreover, the user may not always want a newly downloaded image from the intended Web page, but rather want the quickest way of outputting while maintaining the needed picture quality, or the best image quality while preferring the fastest outputting speed. Moreover, the user may wish to obtain high quality printouts by image downloading only in cases where fainting of thin lines and smearing of characters are expected to occur when the documents produced by the N-in-1 method, i.e., printing the reduced images of multiple Web pages into one page, are copied. Furthermore, the user may wish to obtain outputs in color by downloading from Web pages, if the output device is capable of color printing, while existing documents are available only in monochromatic, as they can only result in monochromatic copies. The abovementioned image processing devices cannot cope with those requests by the user as well.
The present invention is made to address the abovementioned problems of the prior art, and one objective of the invention to provide an image-processing device capable of outputting a document image data automatically when the image processing device, which normally generates and outputs Web page image data by reading a Web page printout, recognizing characters of its URL, and connecting to a Web server, fails to be connected with the Web server for a certain reason.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide an image-processing device capable of outputting an intended image data by specifying a proper image data when a Web page image read from a document is different from a generated Web page image.
Yet another objective of the present invention is to provide an image-processing device capable of outputting an intended image data by properly selecting it between a document image data and a downloaded Web page image data based on the user's requirement prioritizing either quality or speed.
Yet another objective of the present invention is to provide an image-processing device capable of outputting a high quality Web page image without any smeared characters by using downloaded Web page image data only when the particular document is an N-in-1 document.
Yet another objective of the present invention is to provide an image-processing device capable of outputting in color even if a provided document is a monochromatic document by means of using a downloaded Web page image data only when the provided document is a monochromatic document and the output device is capable of outputting in color.